


The Girl with the Gold Crown Tattoo

by goldenheadfreckledheart



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mostly Fluff, doctor!clarke, historynerd!bellamy, mentions of aurora's death, mentions of jake's death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 20:29:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4759961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenheadfreckledheart/pseuds/goldenheadfreckledheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr prompt: “you just caught me cleaning up some graffiti on our apartments and congratulated me on being an awesome person and decided to help me clean but little did you know I was only cleaning it so I could have blank canvas au”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girl with the Gold Crown Tattoo

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a bastardization of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, to which this fic could not be any less related.
> 
> Tbh I don't know how to describe this fic apart from the fact that it kind of got away from me. Hope it's enjoyable. :)

The alleyway behind Bellamy’s apartment building is disgusting. He should know, he has to walk through it on his way back from work every day. It’s either that or walk an extra five minutes around the block, and he doesn’t have that kind of patience after a full day at the museum.

The alley isn’t very long, but nearly every inch of it is covered in graffiti of the ‘Jessica was here’ or completely unreadable variety. He’s pretty sure he’s seen rats scurrying around back there a couple times.

It’s also usually deserted—due to its putrid disgusting-ness, he assumes—which is why he’s more than a little surprised to see a blonde girl there one evening, glaring at the wall. She’s wearing frayed shorts and a ratty t-shirt with a tarp spread out around her.

A can of paint that looks to be the same off-white color the walls would be, if they weren’t covered in grime, is standing nearby, open, and a paint roller hangs from her hand.

The entire image just really doesn’t make sense. She doesn’t look like the kind of person you’d hire to repaint your alley.

He doesn’t go out of his way to talk to people he doesn’t know, but curiosity gets the best of him.

“Doing some cleaning up?” he asks, shortly, when he’s closer.

She startles a little at his voice and turns quickly to face him. While she seems to struggle a bit to find words, her eyes show no sign of timidity, “I um…yeah. I am.”

“Do you live here?”

She looks a little offended, “Yes. Of course. 207. Do you?”

“No, I just walk through here because I enjoy being surrounded by rats and the smell of week old garbage.”

She snorts a laugh. It strikes him as a remarkably honest sound, and he likes it, against his better judgement. Up close, he can tell that she’s probably about his age, maybe a little younger, and that her shirt is for some band that he’s never heard of.

“Am I wrong in assuming nobody paid you do to this?” He nods to the roller in her hand.

She shakes her head, then turns back to the wall, staring at it like she wants it to tell her all its secrets. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone look so concentrated, which might be why he doesn’t feel the need to tell her off. She may look the part, but she doesn’t quite seem like the rebellious delinquent type.

“Why then?”

“I just,” she begins, turning toward him again, shrugging, a solemn darkness in her eyes, “I don’t know, it seems like a good thing to do. I’ve got time, and I needed a distraction.”

And because he  _gets_  that—gets the need for any sort of distraction after his mother’s death a year ago—he picks up the brush beside the can of paint and dips it in, dragging the clean color down the wall.

She doesn’t say anything at first, just lifts her roller to the wall and smooths the paint all the way to the ground with even, careful strokes. He glimpses a flash of a tattoo on her wrist that looks like it’s been painted on in pure gold.

“You don’t have to help me, you know,” she says after a few minutes, still focused on the wall.

His answer is immediate, and grumbled, “You shouldn’t be out here on your own at this time of night.”

Octavia would punch his arm for that, if she were there, before going on about how he’s ‘such a worrier.’

The girl just laughs again, “Okay, mom.”

“Bellamy,” he says and he catches her eyes leaving the wall for the first time since they started painting, but they return to the task before he can meet them with his own.

“Clarke.”

She may not be looking at him, but he’s looking at her, and he sees the smile at her lips when they return to painting in companionable silence.

They finish about a third of the alley that night, and he’d be worried about getting in some kind of trouble, but really, what are they going to get arrested for? Reverse graffiti?

* * *

She’s there again the next day, which is somehow not surprising, and he shakes his head in amusement.

He acts like he has to debate if he should help her again, which is pathetic, considering there was never any question. He tells himself that he’s definitely not intrigued by her eyes or the way the hair at the nape of her neck is constantly falling out of her ponytail.

“Hey,” he says when he’s within earshot, “Give me like five minutes, I’m gonna go change.”

If she’s surprised, she doesn’t show it. Or maybe he just doesn’t give her enough time to react.

When he comes back though, she holds out a second roller for him with a small grin. He takes it, returns the smile, and tries not to be excited that she was expecting him. It’s a goddamn paint roller, not a declaration of affection.

They’re halfway through the second third of the wall when she speaks.

“Why are you helping me? Really. Not some crap about being worried about my poor female self being out here all alone.”

It takes him so much by surprise that he can’t helping laughing out loud. He catches her smile before she tamps down on it, forcing herself to look serious. It’s cute.

“It’s not crap,” is all he says.

“What?” She turns away from the wall completely now, facing him.

“Me being worried isn’t crap. You don’t know what kind of creeps are out here at night. But mostly…I don’t know,” he scratches his neck and decides to go for honesty, “After my mom died, I was going through some shit and I didn’t deal with it particularly well. Whatever it is you’re going through, you’re handling it much more…productively than I did. You’re fixing things instead of throwing furniture against the wall. I can admire that.”

She turns back to the wall, and he assumes the conversation is over until she says, “My dad. Died a month ago.”

He hums in response. “Is that for him?” he asks, nodding to the tattoo at her wrist.

She lifts her arm to look at it, something a little reverent in her expression. Now that he’s not just glancing at it out of the corner of his eye, he can see it’s the outline of a crown, the dark gold standing out against her pale skin.

“Yeah. He was an artist. This was his…” she trails off, her eyes shifting abruptly, “It reminds me of him.”

He doesn’t push.  _A month._  He doesn’t even think he could have a normal conversation within a month of his mother’s death.

“What do you do?” he asks, to change the subject.

She brightens, “I’m a doctor. Or, almost. I’m in my residency.”

Bellamy laughs, because who is this girl? “You save lives during the day and then you spend your free time cleaning up gross alleyways? Are you a saint?”

She laughs with him. “More like I just don’t have a social life. What about you?” she asks, bumping her hip against his, sorrow seemingly forgotten.

He tries, and fails, to not overthink the contact. “I’m an archivist at the history museum downtown.”

Clarke hasn’t really, properly smiled at him until this moment, and it’s kind of great. She looks carefree and  _happy_  as she brushes a strand of hair away from her face.

“That sounds amazing!”

Her excitement is a little blinding. “Uh, yeah.” He’s pretty sure he’s blushing. “It’s kind of a dream come true,” he says honestly.

Her roller, drenched in paint, returns to the wall but she glances at him over her shoulder, still smiling. “Tell me about it?”

He does, and the rest of the evening passes quickly. Half the time he feels like he’s embarrassing himself and over-sharing on the historical and mythical anecdotes, but when he lapses into silence her converse clad foot nudges against his, urging him to continue his telling of Atalanta’s race. It makes him smile. The story is one of Octavia’s favorites as well. (“She doesn’t fall for him because he  _beat_ her, Bell. She loves him because he admired her for being an epic athlete, and not for her looks or money.”)

* * *

The next day they finish painting the wall in much the same way and say goodbye with vague promises to see each other around the apartment building.

Octavia comes over for dinner, and to tease him about the girl he’s been cancelling his evening plans for.

“I didn’t  _have_  any plans.”

“Sure you did,” his sister says, shoveling spaghetti into her mouth. “You always have plans. It’s just that they’re nerdy plans like reading and shit. And you’ve been cancelling them,” she says, pointing her fork at him, “I want to meet this girl.”

“Well sucks for you, ‘cause I’m not seeing her again.” It’s meant to be petulant, but mostly it comes off like he’s disappointed about it. Which he kind of is.

Clarke’s quiet in a thoughtful way, but she’s obviously not scared to say what she means. She’s also ridiculously gorgeous, but that’s beside the point.

“Don’t be mopey. She  _lives_  here. It’s not like you can never go and knock on her door.”

He reaches across the table to shove her shoulder. “I don’t have a crush. Leave it.”

She just smiles cheekily at him, “I never said you did.”

* * *

But just because he doesn’t have a crush doesn’t mean he’s not livid when he sees that someone has already painted on Clarke’s clean wall.

He notices it when he comes home the next day, and it looks like the beginnings of a mural, only covering a little of the leftmost side. All it is so far is a path with a few trees behind, but it’s clearly not finished.

It’s certainly not the worst kind of graffiti, but they’ve  _just_  finished painting it and it just seems disrespectful, somehow. He vows that if it’s been added to the next time he sees it, he’ll…do something. He’s not sure what. Maybe paint it over again. He knows it’s harmless, but it kind of hurts him to see someone messing with Clarke’s coping project.

As fate would have it, he doesn’t work the next couple days, and so he doesn’t pass it again until he’s leaving for work three days later.

When he does see it, it’s hard not to gape. It only spans half the wall, but whoever painted it must have been there non-stop during the intermediate days, because there’s a staggering amount of detail; the leaves of the trees almost seem to sway in the soft breeze that passes through the alley. And because he is who he is, he knows immediately what it’s depicting.

Atalanta, with flowing hair, fierce eyes, and two golden apples in her hands, is running just steps behind Hippomenes, who has the third apple still secured at his waist. He’s looking back toward her, and their gazes are locked with intensity, but also something affectionate. Respect, maybe. It brings the myth to life so vividly that he can hardly breathe for a second.

Something tickles at the back of his brain, but he doesn’t realize what it is until he notices the outline of a crown, painted in delicate yellow, in the bottom right corner, nestled amongst the vivid blades of grass. It hits him like a jolt and he almost doesn’t want to believe what he’s sure it means.

In a haze, he walks back inside and up the stairs, stopping in front of apartment 207 before he really knows what he’s going to say. She lied. That stings a bit. But she also painted the myth  _he_  told her…fuck.

Still unsure how to feel, he knocks.

He hears the rustling of the locks just before she opens the door. Her eyes take him in and she grins for a split second before her face falls. Like she knows he figured it out.

“Shit. I’m so sorry. I should have told you, I just…god, I’m so sorry.”

A breath he didn’t know he was holding leaves his mouth in a rush and any anger he had vanishes at the obvious remorse in her voice. Really, what is there to be angry about?

“You didn’t tell me you were an artist.”

“I—” she pauses, hand still on her doorknob, “You’re not mad?”

“I mean, yeah, you could have told me, but  _Clarke_ , it’s incredible.” It’s more enthusiastic than he intended and he scratches his neck, “And still better than any coping mechanism I ever had.”

She’s smiling timidly now and it’s pretty hard for him to deny how much he wants to kiss her. Which he feels weird about. He’s known her for all of six days.

Still, he says, “And, you know, it’s based on the story I told you. Which is a little flattering.”

Her cheeks turn pink and he hopes that means he’s not the only one feeling something.

“It was a good story,” she says, soft, “it helped. And I needed something to paint. Painting helps too.”

“I’m glad,” he smiles, warmth blooming in his chest before he looks down at his watch. “And I’m also going to be late. I guess I’ll um, see you around…” He trails off and Octavia’s voice is already in his head, telling him that he should  _at least ask her to hang out, you giant coward._

“Wait!” he turns back to where she’s reaching back inside her apartment, her foot propping the door open. She reappears a second later with a bag on her shoulder, “Are you walking? Can I come with you?”

It’s really hard to do anything but grin at her and be grateful that she’s ignoring his painfully awkward goodbye, “I thought you said you don’t mind being out on your own?”

She rolls her eyes, “Maybe I, for some strange reason, thought it’d be nice to walk with my nerdy neighbor, since we’re going the same way.”

He’s  _not_  blushing. “Alright, but only if you promise not to tag any walls along the way.”

She locks the door behind her and knocks her shoulder into his, “Shut up.”

* * *

“Your dad’s signature?” he asks when they’ve been walking for a few minutes, nodding to her wrist.

Her eyes jerk up to him, like she’s surprised he guessed.

“What? I’m not completely unobservant.”

“It’s just kind of crazy that you understand me so well.”

He really doesn’t know what to do with that and he’s pretty sure his heart is beating faster than is strictly healthy.

“But yeah, it makes me feel close to him,” she says while he collects himself. “Signing my work with it just seemed to make sense.

She says goodbye to him at the steps of the museum, pushing up on her toes to press her lips to the corner of his mouth.

“Thanks,” her voice is quiet, and she doesn’t quite meet his eyes, “for everything.”

“Clarke?” he calls when she’s a few steps away.

She turns, eyebrows raised, cheeks still flushed.

 _Fuck it._  “Do you want to get dinner with me tonight?”

Her grin is wide and immediate, “Yeah.”

“’Kay,” he says, walking toward her, “One more question.”

She’s still smiling up at him when he reaches her, “What’s that?”

His skin burns from the ghost of her lips. “Can I kiss you?”

Then she’s up on her toes again, her hands settling behind his neck. “Yeah,” she breathes, then shakes her head a little, “I wasn’t sure if you—but, yeah.” Before he can say anything, she leans forward to capture his bottom lip between hers.

He feels her smile against his mouth when he groans and then she’s laughing a little, pulling back, “How late are you right now?”

“Not late enough,” he says, grinning before he surges forward to kiss her again, “But probably later than I should be.”

“Go,” she laughs, pushing at his chest, “Don’t get fired for making out with the weird graffiti girl from your building.”

It doesn’t feel like much of a gamble to say, “I  _like_  the weird graffiti girl from my building.”

She’s blushing again when she rolls her eyes, “She likes you too.”

He takes her to meet Octavia eventually, who interjects more than her full share of ‘I told you so’s.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://www.goldenheadfreckledheart.tumblr.com) if you'd like! :)


End file.
